Recruiting services use the star-rating system to grade high school prospects. The evaluation grades are in part based upon production, in part projection, and in part present physical traits. Prospects range from 5-stars (elite) to 1-star (fringe).

CLEMSON — Bryce Brown was the nation’s No. 1 overall prospect in 2009. Many football programs, including Clemson, recruited the running back heavily.

BUSTS BY THE NUMBERS

Number of Rivals.com top 100 prospects from 2006-09 that exhausted college eligibility: 390

Number of busts: 165 (42.3 percent)

Number of stars: 55 (14.1 percent)

Why do they bust?

44.2 percent of busts transferred

28.4 percent became career backups

13.9 percent had significant injuries

13.3 percent were dismissed from program

Players were not considered busts if they had at least one standout season — conference honors, elite numbers — started 20 games, or played in 40 career games (including special teams).

Players were considered stars if they became a first- or second-round NFL pick or earned conference player of the year or All-America honors.

Some recruiting analysts preferred Michael Dyer to former South Carolina star back Marcus Lattimore in 2010.

Signing Day Updates

Get live Signing Day updates throughout the day Wednesday at postandcourier.com. And share your signing day photos with us by emailing them to sportsdesk@postandcourier.com.

Follow our reporters on Twitter:

Phil Bowman, high schools, @PandCPhil

Darryl Slater, USC, @DarrylSlater

Travis Sawchik, Clemson, @travis_sawchik

Jeff Hartsell, Citadel, @Jeff_fromthePC

In 2011, Mike Bellamy signed with Clemson to become just the second five-star running back from Florida to leave for an out-of-state ACC school. The first? Former Clemson star C.J. Spiller.

Like Spiller, Bellamy’s speed was remarkable — he took his first college handoff 75 yards for a touchdown.

Last season, Bellamy, Brown and Dyer did not play Division I college football. All three could be labeled busts.

Recruiting is often called an inexact science and the level of inaccuracy, even with the best prospects, is surprisingly high.

An analysis of Rivals.com’s top 100 players from 2006 to 2009 reveals that 42 percent of the nation’s top prospects became busts, meaning they failed to either play in 40 games, start 20 games or have one above-average season in their college careers.

More than 1 million boys play high school football each fall. The chance of one of them being ranked as a Rivals.com top 100 prospect as a senior is 0.0004 percent. Yet, 42 percent of the best of the top one percentile still fail.

In contrast, only 14 percent of those 100 prospects have been, or are projected to be, first- or second-round picks in the NFL draft.

Why do so many of the top prospects fail to live up to expectations?

Red flags

ESPN national recruiting analyst Tom Luginbill says the public often believes prospects fail because they lack a physical trait. They are too slow or too small. Luginbill says this conventional wisdom is misguided.

“When a guy doesn’t pan out, when there is an error in evaluation, more often than not it’s not something athletic,” Luginbill said. “It can be as simple as not being mature enough not to wake up at 5 a.m. for winter workouts and study halls without having mommy and daddy tap you on the shoulder. Or it could be as severe as finding yourself hanging out with the wrong crowd.”

Busts happen for different reasons and they often have little to do with physical talent.

The 165 busts form Rivals.com’s top 100 lists from 2006-09 — a pool of 390 players who had extinguished college eligibility — failed for different reasons:

73 transferred to another school;

47 were career backups;

23 suffered significant injuries;

22 were dismissed from their team.

Brown was investigated by the NCAA for improper benefits, though cleared. He left Tennessee after one season, transferred to Kansas State where he carried the ball three times before declaring for the NFL draft, a decision some analysts cited as evidence in questioning his passion for the game.

“It’s not something that has anything to do with physical ability,” Luginbill said. “It’s some other unknown variable, or a known variable that you knew was a red flag and you weren’t able to control it.”

Clemson’s staff was well aware of Bellamy’s immaturity. They knew he came from a difficult background. They took a chance on his talent. Bellamy frustrated the staff with his inability to learn the playbook while also complaining about playing time. He was sent from the team hotel back to Clemson in the hours leading up to the ACC title game in 2011 for a violation of team rules. He was dismissed from the team in March for failing to meet academic benchmarks.

Dyer was suspended from Auburn in 2011 for a violation of team rules. He transferred to Arkansas State where he was dismissed from the team for another violation of team rules.

Some staffs do a better job than others in evaluating and developing top players.

Southern Cal signed an overwhelming number of top 100 players from 2006-09, but produced only four first- or second-round NFL picks while having 22 busts. Alabama produced six first- or second-round NFL picks from 100 signees over that four-year span and had eight busts.

Limits of scouting

If intangibles are key in determining success, why aren’t more red flags identified and employed as a part of the decision-making process?

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney says it is difficult to project talent and intangibles.

“These are young people that change,” Swinney said. “Put them in a different environment at 18 years old and some of them adjust, some of them don’t. Some of them take the next step, some don’t. Some lose their focus. There are girls, there are parties, there’s a lot of decisions that have to be made to take the next step.”

There are other factors, too.

Unlike the NFL, there isn’t a player personnel staff solely devoted to scouting and collecting background on players. That role falls upon the coaching staff.

The NCAA limits the amount of time head coaches can spend on the road recruiting, lessening their ability to get a feel for prospects’ intangibles. But the rules are being loosened to expand coaches’ ability to communicate with prospects, including an elimination of restrictions on “methods and modes of communication during recruiting,” meaning no limits on texting.

But even with unfettered communication with recruits and people close to them, accurate information can be difficult to acquire.

“You ask the guidance counselors, the principals, the athletic trainers (about a player’s character) and you may not always get an honest answer,” Luginbill said, “because they want the kid to have a chance.”

Lexington High coach Scott Earley’s teams have produced successful college players like Virginia Tech linebacker Bruce Taylor and Notre Dame quarterback Everett Golson. Earley said many high school coaches are honest with recruiters, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference.

“You can tell a college evaluator that a player is lazy,” Earley said, “and they’ll take them anyway because they think they can fix it.”

Star-crossed

Earley believes the star- rating system itself contributes to the high failure rate of top prospects.

“I think being a (top-rated prospect) is a hindrance, not a help,” Earley said. “I think that it leads to an attitude. They have it so easy at the high school level, people have catered to them, then they go to the next level and they are just like anybody else. Then their character and work ethic comes into play and (some) end up dropping off the map.”

Luginbill is a former player and professional coach in the defunct XFL. He knows the process is imperfect. But even if coaches and recruiting services had unlimited resources in evaluating, Luginbill said there would still be mistakes in evaluations. His evidence? The NFL.

“They have unlimited resources to uncover any red flag you could possibly have to avoid making a $40 million mistake on one guy, and you know what? They still make them,” Luginbill said. “If you hit on 60 percent of your class, you’ve probably done a pretty good job. That’s a staggering number. ... There is no bigger inexact science.”

Comments

Notice about comments:

The Post and Courier is pleased to offer readers the enhanced ability to comment on stories. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point.

We do not edit user submitted statements and we cannot promise that readers will not occasionally find offensive or inaccurate comments posted in the comments area. If you find a comment that is objectionable, please click the X that appears in the upper right corner when you hover over a comment. This will send the comment to Facebook for review. Please be reminded, however, that in accordance with our Terms of Use and federal law, we are under no obligation to remove any third party comments posted on our website. Read our full terms and conditions.